Pakistan is prone to powerful earthquakes owing to their birth to thejuncture of three colliding tectonic plates: Indian, Eurasian and Arabian.The Indian and Eurasian plates grind past each other along the ChamanFault, triggering destructive temblors.
The deadly earthquakes of 2005 and 2013 struck along one of the mosthazardous yet poorly studied tectonic plate boundaries in the world.
The earthquakes were likely centred on a southern strand of the ChamanFault. In 1935, an earthquake on the northern Chaman Fault killed more than30,000 people and destroyed the town of Quetta. It was one of the deadliestquakes ever in Southeast Asia.
Earthquakes along the Chaman Fault are more frequent in the north than inthe south.
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Similar to California’s San Andreas Fault or Turkey’s East Anatolian Fault,in some spots, the massive plate boundary is not a single fracture. Insouthern Pakistan, the Chaman Fault splits into more than one strand,weaving a braid of many smaller faults. The differences between north andsouth influence the number of earthquakes. In the past 40 years, only onequake bigger than magnitude 6.0 has jiggled southern Pakistan